Your Ideas are Worthless

An interesting thought about innovative business ideas is that, generally speaking, they are of little value in themselves and therefore not worth protecting. Not surprisingly, this (controversial) contemplation has sparked strong disagreement among professionals. Yet this disagreement in stems, in Carol Roth’s opinion, from a misunderstanding of what an idea really is — or at least what the author deems it to be.

Briefly put, if a company creates something of value that can be protected and it makes sense to protect it (i.e. the cost of protecting it makes sense in relation to the amount of money one believes that work product can generate), then the effort is justified. Yet, there is a big difference between protecting a concept for a new business and protecting a highly differentiated methodology that has been perfected over a period of years. The following article explains why.